Colour of the heart

I can't help falling in love with bright coloured veggies. I bought a bunch of beetroot so fresh and beautiful at the farmer market one weekend and found my mood going wild with the colours of this proud creature. Why on earth is there such a creature fully endowed with good qualities and beauty like beetroot? Look at its juice:

Only one ridiculous thing about this heavy colour is it is  very hard to wash it away from your hand after you play hard with it :) I'm kidding ain't me?
Evidently it is a dye robust enough to induce a new hue and to transform your taste of colour:

There was a long way from its original colour to where it became to in my dyed rice, which taught me the lesson of heat, proportion and cooking time in cooking.

I also learnt about "reaction" colours when making the cupcakes. The juice and icing sugar plus butter became more pinkish at first than after being put on the cupcake.

 
It is this hue and the process it transforms that is keeping inspiring me.

They fly me high

A non-recipe home cook often finds her own cooking moments of flying out of details extraordinary to her eyes and known knowledge. It is when she makes a cake out of a wrong recipe, arranges the dish in a never-seen-before way, and sees her piece of works from various angles through the lens of a child painter.

But it's not often the case she has to wait to see the final product, which after that ignites the engine of the hot air balloon in her. At times, the beautiful process of the dish coming into being in its own way is just overwhelming. She just stands still and witnesses subtle magical moments life shines on food and gives it a unique meaning, the meaning that emerges out of a now-or-never moment that teaches her the lesson of staying open staying fresh. There is nothing absolutely right or wrong, and imperfection is just perfect enough, that's what she double confirms through her cooking.

Things shine from their own standpoints, and let imagination drive you to locate your own standpoint. The joy of cooking then is not only the joy of making things out of love. It's also a huge release of emotions, an imaginary travel through a new land, and a full reflection of life in tranquillity. She has at that time found herself nicely singing John Lennon "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky". And imagination goes on and on, beyond the square and drives her crazy until her kid pulls her down to earth.


Kids come into being to raise up a mum. And a mum cook would need her kid to reshape her outworn view of food and food making: simplicity, purity and originality. Wear a child mind and look at things with a child lens, you would agree with her cooking is to transform your heart and your soul.